


Their Survival Machines

by atomicsuperkick



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, F/M, Multi, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:51:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicsuperkick/pseuds/atomicsuperkick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katharine St. Clair was a woman out of time, out of hope. She sets out to find her son, and learns that you can't change the past, but you can do your part to make the future better.</p><p>Mature rating for regular, but not gratuitous, use of expletives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Survival Machines

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a novelization of my SoSu's experiences. It may diverge from canon when I felt the dialogue wheel options weren't in line with what my OC would actually say. I hope

The platform ascended slowly, metal on metal creaking back to life, like Lazarus emerging from his tomb.

“Enjoy your return to the surface.”

It was bright. So bright. Katharine put a hand in front of her eyes and surveyed what had happened. What was left. A sob escaped her throat. Skeletons littered the ground around her like popcorn kernels on a movie theater floor. Her friends, her neighbors lay on the ground, remembered by no one. And the houses…they stood proudly against the setting sun, shell-shocked but determined. 

It was gone. Everything. Everything was gone. 

How long had she been sitting here, crying?

It was getting dark and her head pounded. Her voice was raw and her face puffy from crying. Half delirious, she wondered if she should run back to her old home. Maybe it would jog her memory, wake her up, it would do something. She would jolt upright in bed, Nate sleeping soundly next to her, and she would have been dreaming. 

With this in mind, she stood, her legs trembling from the effort. She ran, blindly, trying to ignore the bones that seemed to follow her now, wherever she went. A suitcase lay open on the path leading back to the cul-de-sac. She knelt down. She had seen this suitcase just an hour ago, maybe. What felt like an hour, she found herself correcting. Who knows how long it had been. It didn’t matter, she’d be waking up soon anyway. She noticed a case of 10 millimeter rounds and pocketed them, almost without thinking about it.

She stood up and continued running, realizing with a hiccuped cry of anguish that no streetlights would be coming on to guide her. But it didn’t matter, she’d be waking up soon enough. This, she knew. It had to be a dream. She turned left from the dirt path onto the street. Jesus Christ…she sighed heavily and crumpled to her knees. It was not a dream. Brittle weeds choked up through what used to be the road. Tires and branches, mailboxes and tiles, were scattered like leaves in autumn. Rusted out shells of cars dotted the street. Night was coming fast, and she needed to find somewhere to hide. Who knew what lay in wait. Besides, she couldn’t wake up until she got back home.

She got back to her feet again, trying to soothe herself with deep, steadying breaths. The air smelled so…dead. Everything around her was dead. Her imagination seemed to be working over time. Katharine walked up what was left of the sidewalk, flashes of her pushing Shaun’s small stroller this same way. She stifled another sob, and turned to look back toward the bridge. She remembered watching Nate drive over the bridge and into their new neighborhood, deftly maneuvering a a large moving truck to their brand new home. Nate…she sighed. She couldn’t wait to tell him about her bizarro dream over coffee tomorrow morning. She turned back, the familiar red door just a few paces away---

“…Cod-Codsworth?” Katharine deflated. Not a dream. 

The Mister Handy robot turned toward a voice he was sure he was not hearing. His microphone sensors were in dire need of recalibration. “Miss Katharine…as I live and breathe! It’s really you!” 

“This isn’t happening.” Katharine shook her head, putting a hand up toward the robot. No. It was a dream, it had to be. Otherwise it meant…no, she had to be imagining this. 

“Where’s sir? And the young master Shaun? I’ve missed them so,” Codsworth said. 

Katharine continued to shake her head. “Dead. Everything’s dead. Everything’s dead. Everyone is dead,”

“Miss Katharine, you’re not making any sense. Please explain to me.”

Katharine crumpled under the weight of everything. She sank to her knees, eyes staring into the dirt as if they held answers. “They…they killed him, Codsworth. Nate. He. He’s dead, Codsworth. These…these people. Th-they killed him and they made me watch. They took Shaun.” She dissolved again, powerless to stop the waves of emotion wracking her body. She collapsed into herself, trying with all she had to just hold on.

“Mum, really now. Surely you’re just suffering from some hunger-induced paranoia. Let me get you a snack,” the robot tutted. “Let’s see…”

“Codsworth…what year is it?” she whispered, voice sounding strangled.

“It is October 23, 2287, mum. Should I make an entry in the calendar?”

“It’s been 200 years,” she whispered. Two. Hundred.

“Well, about 210 year give or take. The old chronometer has a few dents,” Codsworth replied. “It’s been so long!” He gasped.

“Codsworth, have you seen Shaun?” Katharine had managed to sit up on the ground, but she rocked herself back and forth. Beads of sweat formed on her brow as she focused on her breathing, on whatever it was that allowed Codsworth to speak. She needed to stay rational. Shaun might be out there and he needed his mother.

“No, mum, I haven’t. Perhaps there’s someone who might. There are some people in Concord, and they only shot at me a few times the last time I went down there.” Codsworth seemed to look at Katharine, though she could never be sure that the robot ever really saw her. She was slightly apprehensive of a machine that had claimed to be able to a change a diaper as well as she could.

“I…I’ll head there in the morning. I need to sleep. Maybe I’ll wake up soon,” she muttered, closing her eyes and slumping over on the cold ground. 

___________________________________________

“Miss Katharine? Oh goodness…not you, too.” A soft, mechanical voice whispered just above her head.

“Hmm?” Katharine’s hands found their way to her eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. She yawned and her eyes fluttered open. Silently, she stared up at the rafters hanging haphazardly above her face. “Shit. I thought this was supposed to be a dream. Dammit,” Katharine sat up and tried to locate Codsworth. He hovered near the foot of…well, it wasn’t a bed. A sleeping bag.

“I daresay you were dreaming, Mum, but it wasn’t…pleasant.” 

Katharine stretched. It was a sleeping bag, alright. Her ancient Jangles the Moon Monkey one. “Is that so?” she asked, frowning at the monkey’s stupidly smiling face. Maybe, if this wasn’t a dream, she was in an elaborate cry-hallucination. That was totally a thing, right?

“You…em, you were screaming, Mum. Scared off the bloatflies, which was nice, but….” Codsworth trailed off, trying to busy himself with fluffing the pillow. “I apologize for the…the accommodations, Miss Katharine. There isn’t much in the way of bedding here, anymore.”

She continued to stare at the dumb grin plastered on the rayon monkey’s face. This fucking thing could survive a nuclear apocalypse, but her husband? Her baby? Jesus, what about her parents and her brother? No, they had to die, but she got to live and hang out with a stupid fucking animated monkey sleeping bag and Tin Can Percy the Wonder Bot. “Yeah, whatever, Codsworth. Thanks for finding me this…thing. How’d you even get me in it? No - wait - don’t answer.” She stood up and brushed herself off. She felt so…stale. Two hundred and ten years without a bath. She wrinkled her nose at the thought and laughed. God, this whole scenario was fucking ridiculous.

“The world really ended? Like, there’s nothing left?” Katharine shook her head, an incredulous grin spreading across her lips. “You’re not shitting me, Codsy, ol’ pal?”

“I wish I was…shitting you, Mum.” Codsworth paused, as if considering how to handle Katharine’s…unstable mood. “Humans are a very crafty lot. Quite resilient, I’d say. Everything you and I knew is gone, but…well, people still exist. Life went on. It goes on. And so on, in perpetuity.”

“I just…I…it was—it feels like it was just earlier today, you know?” Katharine ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head again. “Like, any moment I’m going to snap out of it and find myself at the park with Nate and the baby….” She drew a ragged breath. Her emotions had been bonkers for a few weeks…well, plus a couple centuries. Shaun was only a few weeks old. “Look, I’m sorry, Codsworth. It’s taking a lot for me to even form sentences, right now. And I’ve got to go try to find my baby and…I don’t even know what it’s like out there? How the hell am I gonna survive a wasteland? You said you were shot at, right?”

“But you know how to handle a pistol, at least, right? You could shoot back.”

Katharine paused, looking at the floating metal orb. Images of afternoons wiled away at the gun range swam past her eyes. It was compulsory for high school students. Couldn’t be too prepared, her instructor would say. The Red Menace doesn’t care whether you’re a civilian, she found herself reciting silently. “Yeah, I do. I’m a little rusty, though.” 

If Katharine didn’t know better, she would say the little robot chirped. “I managed to save your gun, Mum, and some ammunition. I do hope it helps you. And…if you’re up for some target practice, I’ve been procrastinating on cleaning up doing some exterminating work.”

“Perfect.” 

Marksmanship was a sort of hidden talent for Katharine. In high school, she shot clay pigeons and at ranges as was required, but she also competed for titles at the state level. That was how she met Nate. Their senior year, state rifle team finals. He had transferred from some boys’ school, and brought a certain arrogance that had only been matched by his skill with a rifle. She was smitten. The rest, really, was history.

He enlisted in the Army, and she went on to ROTC at Amherst, eventually going Navy JAG. They met again years later at a USO hall, and in the span of one year they married, bought a home using his GI Bill, and had the baby. The baby.

She went after the radroaches and bloatflies with Codsworth, pretending each one was the man who destroyed whatever she had thought was her life. The feel, the breath, the steadying, lining up the sight with the target and squeezing the trigger, it all came flooding back to her at once. One by one she put down each disgusting giant housefly, each absurdly large cockroach. One by one they stopped moving until there were none left.

“I think you’re ready to head to Concord, Mum. I do hope you find someone who can help you,” Codsworth said, attempting to gesture toward the ruins of the town.

“Thanks, Codsworth. I’ll be back by sunset. If I’m not, assume I didn’t make it.” Katharine tried to force a smile. If there was no escaping this stupid simulation, she thought, might as well play along.


End file.
